


at the bottom of everything

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Computers, F/M, Machines, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is at once the queen and the pawn.</p>
<p>Written for the au teen wolf meme, prompt was: <i>cyberpunk</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the bottom of everything

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bright Eyes.

She is at once the queen and the pawn, and they play online chess all day every day. 

At first it's quick games, intellectual insults from her side and good-natured teasing from his, and then she's away from the screen, out in the world to hold onto Jackson's arm and stand with him at the top of everything, in the buildings that go up and up and up, so far above the sewer-rat streets below where half the people are nothing but organic, top to bottom. It would be sickening not to be able to afford the steel shine of her left arm, she thinks, but she doesn't like to dwell on it, on anything but flashing lights and the man-made stars that fill the sky on nights like this.

Up and up and up, the city goes, and she'll keep climbing to the top as long as they keep building, and they'll always keep building, because this is the indestructible city. They've reached the high point of human existence - not altogether human anymore, maybe, but being half machine is still only half, and that leaves enough humanity to satisfy her - and everything they do from here on out is the right thing, the good thing, the _smart_ thing.

Lydia will be the president some day, or maybe the queen if they revert to monarchy - the government can never make up its mind, but she can calculate well enough to make it work, either way - but until then she smiles for Jackson, aces every test, helps code half the city in her off hours, and late, late at night when even the brightest lights are dim, she plays cyber-chess with a boy who's profile picture is so obviously, unrepentantly fake that she doesn't even really mind. Everyone can hide their face if they have enough cash or enough skill - Lydia's got both in spades, and if there was anything about her face that was worth hiding, if there was anything even slightly imperfect, she'd have it reengineered so fast no one would even notice she was gone.

Jackson doesn't notice when she's gone, anyway.

And she's gone more and more lately, quick games turning into long games, turning into longer conversations. He's smart, she knows, that boy on the other side of the screen. He says things that crawl up her spine, things that she reads over and over late into the night, eyes blurring with the hours that she stares at the text on the screen.

_I'm sure you could rule the word one day_ , he types.

_I'm sure that I could, too_ , she types back.

She sometimes fancies she can feel him smirking through the ones and zeros, like a force that lives inside the wires, same as the wires that live inside her.

_I'm sure you could rule it faster, with me by your side._

She reads that message over and over, copies it to her hard drive and has it uploaded to the USB port at her wrist, opening up the file on late nights when she feels especially lonely in her shiny steel tower, or days when Jackson acts more machine than man. She shines the words behind her eyes, lives with them inside of her, coded onto her very bones.

He says stranger things than that, this boy with a false face - _man_ , something in her thinks, but he says he's her age and she doesn't like to think otherwise, because it makes the whole situation too predatory, makes her too much of a victim, which is as false as anything has ever been. She is the queen.

Things get stranger when the flowers start to show up. They don't have flowers in this city, not high up in the buildings, anyway, and she doubts anything could ever grow at the ground-level. They show up on her window, though, and it's never a question of _if_ it's him, just of _how_. She asks and he doesn't answer, just sends more flowers, until they're growing out of the machine, climbing over her chrome walls, and science can do many things - so many _glorious_ things - but it can't do that.

The last message she gets, after their last game of cyber-chess, is _Meet me at the bottom_. And then he's gone, his account, his photos, every log of every conversation they've ever had. She can't even track down a trace in the coding, no matter how deep she digs, how far back she goes. She tries to forget and she tries to ignore the way the flowers creep along her steel walls, but after a while it's too much, and she has no choice.

She takes the elevator down for the first time in her life, and she doesn't take it back up. She is at once the queen and the pawn.


End file.
